Race in America III

I finally found this article that I read in the Indiana Daily Student last week about a talk that I didn’t get to attend by  Cathy Bao Bean, a Chinese American author.  I found the quoted comments pretty frustrating.

From the article Author encourages people to ‘lighten up’ about multi-culturalism:

Bean said it was difficult for her to choose which culture she wanted to be part of because it was impossible for her to be part of both.

“You don’t have to choose; learn to be pleased with yourself,” Bean said.

Overall, Bean told audience members to embrace as many cultures as they can and have some fun while doing it.

She advised all the students in the crowd to try to study overseas and said it is “a little like not getting a joke when everyone else does.”

Bean said although it is difficult, multi-racial people should not try to limit themselves to just one culture.

“When you have to choose, try to choose the one that will keep the least doors closed,” Bean said.

I hate the idea that issues of race and culture are weighty because of the attitudes of people possessing or considering those identities and that it is their sole responsibility to manage that weight.  Maybe it would be easier to “lighten up” if everyone considered race in our culture and the nuances, subtleties, prejudices, and privileges that go along with it.  I think these comments overlook the fact that someone’s racial identity is often not chosen by that person, but by their community, friends, coworkers, family, the government.  Most importantly I think the idea that trying “to choose the one that will keep the least doors closed” glibly overlooks the fact that many people of color or multiracial people have made this very choice, but that this choice has been painful, confusing, and as a result things have been lost both for individuals and for the culture at large.

Still, it’s scary because I think that replacing difficult and complicated issues with ‘the lighter side’ has such resonance with many people.  I think about this as I remember the punk show last night which was just kind of wild and Dionysian and at breakfast this morning when Chiara told me she felt like Silvio Berlusconi had replaced his most recent campaign to become prime minister of Italy with a series of crude jokes.  I don’t want to leave the things that are troubling behind me, I want to have a feeling that they’re not being considered alone.

(not) liking Stuff White People Like

Chiara pointed me at this great analysis (via the Feministing blog) of the Stuff White People Like blog:

For me, despite the humor (and yes, I see the humor and LMAO to different entries all the time) I don’t see how marrying the concept of white-ness to the concept of material is actually helping us get to a new place. And as a friend of mine pointed out, the opposite effect of this is that the underlying assumption of stuff white people like is that the stuff they like is not cool, so then is everything that people of color do totally cool? Does that mean that we should look to people of color for what is cool (insert “wow you are such a good dancer!”)? So in a way it is perpetuating that same thing we are trying to get away from. A hyper fascination with the things that white people like.

What sealed the deal for me was when I heard the author got a $300,000 dollar book deal. That is fucking crazy. If he had been a person of color he would have never gotten so much attention or such a hefty book deal. People would have said, omg, that is racist! They wouldn’t have given it so much cred. My point being, there are a lot of people that call out racism and whiteness, but they don’t get huge book deals for it because they are not white. So despite the potential transformative nature of calling out whiteness for what it is, the author is still getting rewarded for being white, even though he is making fun of white people. And let’s not forget, white people also get paid for making fun of people of color. And what exactly do people of color get paid to do. . . ? To also make fun of people of color or to create characters that fit into white people’s comfort levels of what is acceptable people of colorness. Because as the blog points out subtly, white people have the most capital to be the biggest consumers of everything, so all the images we see are tailored to their sensibilities.

This may be a total stretch, but this is where I am at with the whole thing and just had to put it out there. I see how many people LOVE this blog and how many people of color love it. And I see how uncomfortable it makes white people, which I also think is good. Being uncomfortable can often motivate you to think outside yourself. But is it really leading to this transformative conversation for a racially just world or is it perpetuating our assumed differences, realigning them with a gaze on what is considered white?

NEW WATERCOLOR AND SCREENPRINTS BY ROBERT FREESE opening @ Sweet Hickory. 7-10p. free.

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ART OPENING.
SATURDAY APRIL 26TH
7-10 PM
NEW WATERCOLOR AND SCREENPRINTS BY ROBERT FREESE
free.. food and drinks provided.

“I’m 21 years old, a senior at indiana university studying art education. My art tends to be about nature and the psyche. Our minds play so many tricks, they can rarely be trusted sometimes. I like to think about how my mind might make the forest scarier than it really is, or a little more psychedelic. In essence, all we have is what we can see, feel, and experience. And this is what i see based on what i experience.”

At SWEET HICKORY
317 e. 3rd st in BLOOMINGTON!

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Categorized as Lets Go

Jail Resistence in Bloomington

Some folks have started organizing to plan resistance to plans to organize against a proposed “justice campus” in Bloomington that would include a new, larger jail (as the jail is notoriously overcrowded and there is a federal lawsuit about conditions in the jail), a juvenile “treatment” facility (as youth from Monroe County who are sentenced to one of these facilities have to be sent out of county), and court and administrative facilities (to make transport of inmates between the jail and the courts (and other services?) easier).  Ideologically, I am opposed to the expansion of the number of incarcerated people and a sad reality in most communities is that larger prisons and jails are quickly filled (either by sentencing or by the moving of inmates to take advantage of available space or recover costs), but there needs to be some remediation of the conditions at the existing jail for the inmates and the Federal lawsuit may require some kind of action in the end.

So, I don’t want to frame this issue solely in terms of supporting or opposing jail construction.  If I oppose the jail construction and lose on this and don’t manage to push for increased programming and services for people in the jail and the community at large or assurances that the capacity of the jail will not be used to import people from elsewhere, this is a failure.  Similarly, calls for increased support of social services, to end injustices that are connected with incarceration, and to change the court system or make other changes to incarcerate fewer people are not dependent on jail construction either way.  These things need to be part of the dialog and I think it will be a failure if focusing on jail construction as the sole issue means there isn’t space for talking about things.

My personal goals when it comes to this issue are:

  • Empower incarcerated people, their friends and family to have a central role in the dialog and policy shaping of the jail and criminal justice in Monroe County
  • Include the voice of youth in the dialog about juvenile justice facilities
  • Accurately depict the reasons that people are incarcerated in Monroe County and explode the cultural mythologies of crime and incarceration
  • Explore alternatives to incarceration in Monroe County and move towards expanding and implementing them
  • Address prejudices and stigma about crime, “criminals”, and incarceration
  • Connect issues of economic and racial privilege in Monroe County, support (or lack there of) for social services or grassroots community-based support, and development policies and paradigms with incarceration

Ideally, achieving these things would result in a decision to not expand the jail or build a juvenile facility.  However,  because I see these things as important, I wouldn’t see the defeat of the jail proposal on fiscal grounds (as is the position of many Republican county government officials/candidates) as a victory because it would be likely that there would community support or support from the county officials who rejected jail construction for the things I mentioned above.

Race in America II

Chris Colvard forwarded me this great opinion piece on multiracial identity in a recent edition of the Herald Times.  It was written by an 8th-Grade student in Bloomington:

I’m half Korean, half white, but my mother was born and raised in China. Her mother came to a small, Korean-dominated Chinese town during the bombings of the Korean War. Whenever people ask about my heritage, I have to explain all this, and sometimes I can tell from their faces that even today, though they nod politely, they can’t really tell the difference; through unfortunate ignorance, to them all Asians are one big, squinty-eyed community.

While browsing various Web sites in search of the half-Asian identity that I couldn’t define, I stumbled upon a white nationalist forum — the usual bunch of faceless online bigots who quote Hitler and predict a “Saxon uprising.” They said that multiracials, and half-Asians especially, lack a “national identity” and should go find their own country.

This racist ranting was easily dismissible, laughable even, but it made me wonder: What identity are we supposed to have, we mixed-breeds? Do whites see the world through the lenses of their whiteness? What is the elusive “minority standpoint?” Race never seemed all that important to me. At most, it was a useful tool to get in with certain crowds. Sometimes it was a comedic device: Look at the half-Asian who can’t hold a pair of chopsticks, whose only Chinese vocabulary is “hao chir” (tastes good). But of course, I look white, and this is a diverse town — the few slurs are uttered just out of earshot of the group they concern.

In fact, I look so white that whites have occasionally entertained me with their private bigotry. When I hear people talk about “annoying Asians,” when I hear their disgusting imitations of a Chinese accent, when I see Mickey Rooney do his Jap act in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” I don’t have to show my anger. I’m not obligated to take a risk and stand up for myself, for my heritage. Because to them, I’m just another white kid.

Race in America

“Black Americans were a founding population … Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.””That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.”

Those are the words of Condoleezza Rice, who, regardless of her political affiliations, articulates the reality of race perfectly. Read more of Condoleezza’s commentary in an article in the Washington Times.

This video, a conservative commentator’s response, shows how deeply rooted white supremacy is in the culture of the U.S. which is exactly the problem.

Only An Orphan Girl play @ Edgewood High School’s Auditorium. 2p/7p. $5.

From a press-release:

Egdewood High School’s Masqued Crafters have selected the melodrama “Only An
Orphan Girl” for the May 1-4 spring play.

In this soul-stirring drama of human trails and tribulations, Nellie is a long-
suffering orphan who seems destined not only to lose her lover but her life as
well. When the smooth-talking Arthur Rutherford starts hanging around the farm
house he buys Nellie’s adopted family’s mortgage and swears the only way he’ll
return it is if Nellie will give him her hand in marriage. When she refuses,
because of the secret love she has for another, he continues to pursue her in
ways that put her life and the lives of her loved ones at risk. No one knows
the reason Arthur is so persistent in his proposal to Nellie. What will become
of the poor orphan Nellie, the evil villain and the equally evil villainous or
little Lucy, what will be her fate and the fate of her poor, poor old mother?
And our handsome hero, Dick, what of him? Only time will tell!

When: May 1-3 at 7:00 PM
May 4 at 2:00 PM
Where: Edgewood High School’s Auditorium

Ticket Cost: $5.00

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